For the second year in a row, theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski has won a Milner Foundation Physics Frontiers Prize. This award puts him in the running for the $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize.

A UCSB physics team helped design, build and fill the water tank that houses the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment. With 122 detector tubes, LUX is much more sensitive than its closest rival in the competitive field of dark-matter...

With a passion for science and faith in its potential for life-changing advancements, longtime UC Santa Barbara benefactors Pat and Joe Yzurdiaga have gifted the campus with a $1 million endowed chair in the field.

Erica Mason didn't plan to study physics at UC Santa Barbara. In fact, the campus wasn't even her top choice when she was deciding where to spend her undergraduate years. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans.

Without a laboratory –– using only a blackboard, computer, and his powerful intellect –– a young theoretical physicist at UC Santa Barbara is quickly racking up national and international awards honoring his research in quantum physics.

Scientists have taken a new step toward quantum computing, which will use quantum mechanics to revolutionize the way information is processed. This research appears today in the online version of Nature magazine.

Using plastics to harvest the energy of the sun just got a significant boost in efficiency thanks to a discovery made at the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The 2004 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to David Gross, professor of physics and director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and two others.